A-Winter's-tale-for-Troll-and-Langeleik

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You want to hear a tale, yes? Nothing like a fine tale after you have filled your belly, eh?
Now don't growl or bare your long, long teeth. That doesn't impress me much. I know you won't kill me. You have just eaten my companion. You didn't even split his thighbones to get the marrow so I know you can't take another bite. Too full even to burp. 
...
Stop! I get it. I get it. No more idle talk. I'll start my tale.
…
It is about a princess. Princess Larissa. Yes, a nice plump baby-princess and she was stolen by the evil duke Gorham. 
…
No, no, he didn't want to eat her. Humans don't do that. Or only if they are very hungry.
…
Well, because duke Gorham was evil, I guess. And he hated his brother. Yes, the king. And Larissa was supposed to wed a prince from far Moscovy later and become the queen.
…
That wouldn't be a solution. Marrying your uncle just isn't done. This isn't some yurt on the tundra.
Let me think how the skald, who wintered with us, would sing it. 
And that despicable knave,
he left sweet Larissa 
in a snowdrift
to be eaten 
by a stray wolverine 
or as a dainty dish 
for the lean crows of Winter!
She was, however, found by the Witch of the North and taken to her living castle.
Now the Witch, she was simple hideous. With hairy warts all over and a hooked nose. Hair like reindeer moss.
…
Right, so she was beautiful. Trolls probably see things differently. 
Let me go on with the tale. The witch was childless and adopted her. 
…
I should do that sing-song voice of the skald again? 
The dread witch,
she taught sweet Larissa 
the language of groaning icebergs 
and the gleeful songs 
of killer-whales.
…
What did Larissa eat? Well, whatever she found in her stepmother's winter-larder. Our princess didn't mind dining on the frozen limbs of lost travelers or living in a castle which was in fact a giant sleeping troll.
…
Bigger than you, yes. A lot bigger. A giant I said.
The troll's tongue formed a mighty drawbridge 
and the princess had hung her swing 
between the upper incisors. 
Such fun she had, 
pushed by the gusts 
of the howling winter-storm 
which blew from his throat!
When she turned sixteen... 
…
No, Larissa didn't look like the witch at all. Skin without a single wart, long golden hair and a nose, well, rather like mine.
…
You said it. Sweet Larissa was ugly. But Hiram didn't think so. He was the youngest son of duke Gorham and she met him at the edge of the Forest of Nav. 
...
I know! I know I should have said:
The dark forest of Nav
where sleek otters fly 
and the ravens
caw madrigals.
Can I go on now?
…
Hiram now was hunting a stag with a simply splendid rack of antlers. He had just raised his bow for a second shot but Larissa beat him to the kill. She jumped and laid an arm across the stag's throat and cut his jugular vein with her dagger of mammoth ivory.
"He is mine," she told the hunter en stood ready to cut his throat should he protest.
Hiram's mantle was fashioned from the skin of a white fox so the princess thought him a humble snow-ghost, unfit for the larder, and she was that age...
After their first kiss she decided that Hiram might do very well as a husband and they ended up tearing each others clothes off and rolling in the snow. 
…
Good, right. That isn't how the skald would sing it.
He unwound her silken shawl, 
woven in far Cathay
by blind virgins
and kissed lips
as red as strawberries 
and as delicious!
Her breasts were 
pale as alabaster,
the most delicious pomegranates,
and her slit a moist sheath 
for his thrusting sword.
…
Don't laugh! It was really quite great! A human male doesn't have to bite the neck of his paramour and push her face down in a snowbank. It is more of a consensual thing.
…
Good, you have stopped laughing. I'll go on with the tale.
When she took him to her foster-mother, though, the witch howled in dismay.
"Do you have any idea 
to what wretch 
you have given 
your precious maidenhead? 
A thousand times better 
it would have been
if you had lain 
with a hairy adder 
or a rutting skunk!"
"No matter," Hiram said, when the troll-mouth gate spat them out in the snow. "You can't chose your family."
"Actually she is my step-mother," sweet Larissa said. 
"That explains it. But let's go to my father. Our castle is really quite splendid and I am sure my father and brothers will love..."
Sorry.
"He'll call you
his long lost daughter. 
The joy of his old age 
and lay a mantle
of samite
on your snow-white shoulders!"
The castle looked a bit strange, though:
Sweet Larissa, 
she eyed the splendid fortress
raised on the high crag 
and overlooking 
all the lands of duke Gorham.
"Why, my love,"
she asked, "is the gate toothless
and sports
no tower
a staring eye
to see 
an enemy approaching?"
Wait a moment: do I see a langeleik standing there back in the cave? It looks kind of familiar: with that snake inlaid in mother of pearl... Nine strings, with one broken.
…
For shame! You ate him. You ate my friend the skald. You could have heard this tale from his very own lips and a hundred stories more.
Well, let's sit in front of the cave while I accompany my tale on this instrument. The acoustics are so much better there. 
Yes. Now close your eyes. Concentrate on my words, the notes of the langeleik. 
The duke didn't call sweet Larissa "the joy of his old age and neither did he lay a mantle
of samite on her snow-white shoulders."
He turned quite red and roared:
"You are no son of mine! 
This is worse
than driving a dagger 
in my back 
as ambitious sons
are wont to. 
Why, 
in name of all the saints,
had you to lie 
with some woodcutter's slut? 
While I had a dozen boyar's daughters 
lined up for you? 
Begone!" 
He clearly didn't recognize sweet Larissa as his erstwhile victim otherwise things would have gone even worse.
They weren't spit out but the guards threw stones and frozen horse droppings.
"'I know a woodcutters hut,"
Hiram, eh, quoth,
"most humble
but probably better
than freezing to death."
…
No that isn't a bird singing. Why would a bird sing in the middle of the night? Just keep your eyes closed.
…!
Well, yes. My name is Larissa and you devoured my lover. I am a witch's stepdaughter and a princess and both kind of girls are quite heavily into revenge.
Don't try to run. The sun has just cleared the mountaintops and your legs are turning into stone. Yes, roll your eyes all you want. The witch told me that a troll's eyes change into rubies the moment a sunbeam touches them. Call it blood money.
*
Could you please open the gate of the castle, my dear guard? Me and my langeleik, we know a hundred songs and a dozen more. Such songs! Of wronged lovers and cold-hearted fathers. Of bloody revenge. I would like to sing in the hall of your duke Gorham.
…
I look like a girl? Well, we skalds are made of finer stuff than soldiers. We can shave our beards off and wear a splendid necklace of rubies without being effeminate. I bet I can drink any of your fellows under the table and still sing like a lark.
…
That knife? It is kind of enchanted. It is made of ivory and a cut never heals. You don't believe me? Want to try it?
…
I thought not. Come, knife. Jump back into my hand and leave that man in peace.
…
Witch-boy, you called me? Well, that kind of fits, and waving me through is the most prudent decision you ever made.

THE END